The Rotoworld forums were one of the most popular destinations for fantasy sports fans.
They were the go-to forum to discuss the nuances of running fantasy football or basketball leagues, evaluate players and discuss potential trades. Then, one day in July 2023, they disappeared without any notice.
NBC Sports, which purchased Rotoworld.com in 2006, had been making a number of branding changes in recent years. The site was renamed NBC Sports Edge in 2021, which editor Matthew Pouliot explained on Twitter was part of a larger re-branding as the site began to offer more betting content.
“As you may have noticed this morning, Rotoworld has rebranded as NBC Sports Edge, and we’ve gained some really impressive betting tools,” he wrote. “However, nothing is changing for the fantasy news crew. We’re all doing our usual thing, and everything should look much the same as before.”
While that was the case for at least a couple of years, things at Rotoworld changed drastically in July 2023. Without notice, the site closed down its popular forums which had millions of posts.
A lot was lost when the site suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a screen that read “This community is not available.” There were forums on fantasy baseball and fantasy football, boards devoted to helping leagues find players, even active boards for college football and minor-league baseball where users discussed pro prospects.
No one knows quite why the Rotoworld forum was nixed. When contacted, the NBC Sports customer support department had a terse response that offered no details but made it clear the forums were gone for good.
“We officially shut forums down on Friday night, 7/7/23. We do not plan to have forums in the near future,” the response read.
Some of the more astute members mentioned afterward that there were warning signs, mainly the decreasing amount of moderation throughout the forums.
While the abrupt closure of the Rotoworld forum led to some mourning, there are already some good alternatives including one specifically designed to attract refugees from the popular form.
Here are some of the best alternatives to the Rotoworld forum:
Bettor in Green forum
This site will look very familiar to anyone who used to frequent the Rotoworld forum, and for good reason — it was built as an exact replica of the now-defunct message board. The forum titles are exactly the same, the discussions are just as informative and nuanced, and many of the same posters simply migrated over to Bettor in Green to keep discussions going.
While the volume of posting isn’t quite the same level as the site it replaced, Bettor in Green is growing fast after just a few months. There were a few copycat sites made in the wake of Rotoworld’s abrupt closure, and Bettor in Green appears to have been the winner as some of the others already folded (and advised their users to join the exodus to Bettor in Green).
Reddit’s Fantasy Football subreddit
The Fantasy Football subreddit always been a popular and lively place for discussion, though the structure and layout can make it more catered to timely discussions rather than ongoing ones like in the Rotoworld forum.
Footballguys forum
Like Rotoworld, this site has a little bit of everything (even a stray politics forum). The volume of posting is high, and the structure is very similar to Rotoworld with both general discussion on players and teams along with more specific advice for people participating in or running fantasy sports leagues.
FFToday
The FFToday forum is focused specifically on fantasy football, but has any discussion you could possibly want. There are active boards to connect players to leagues (and help leagues find players), discussions on players, even a very active mock draft board. The volume is very high, with more than 6 million total posts.